Nicolas Pillai

Dr Nicolas Pillai is a Research Fellow in the School of Media at Birmingham City University. He is the author of Jazz as Visual Language: Film, Television and the Dissonant Image (2017, I. B. Tauris) and co-editor of New Jazz Conceptions: History, Theory, Practice (2017, Routledge). He was recently awarded a prestigious AHRC Research Leadership Fellowship to conduct a two-year project entitled ‘Jazz on BBC-TV 1960-1969’. His research has been published in The Soundtrack journal and Darmstadt Studies in Jazz. Writing for a more general audience, he has written liner notes for the British Film Institute Blu-ray and DVD releases of Paris Blues and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. He is currently working on: chapters for The Routledge Companion to New Jazz Studies, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Historyand Heritage and The Oxford History of Jazz in Europe; an edited collection on late Miles Davis; a special issue of Jazz Research Journal on the subject of ‘Jazz and Television.’

2016 Presenters

Researchers in Residence

Prof Chris Atton is Professor of Media and Culture in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University. His work focuses on Alternative Media where his contribution has concentrated on the notion of alternative media not as an essentialised political position but as a set of socio-cultural processes that redraw the boundaries of expert culture and media power. His research interests include popular music, the creative economy, and teaching and learning in higher education. Atton has also written on censorship and media ethics.

Dr Haftor Medbøe is Associate Professor of Music, Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Popular Music and Jazz Musician in Residence at Edinburgh Napier University. His research interests include cultural identity and transnational heritage in contemporary European jazz, popular music pedagogy, interdisciplinarity and practice-as-research. Alongside his academic career, he remains active as a guitarist/composer and over the past decade has released eight albums to international critical acclaim.

Dr Zack Moir lectures across a broad range of music subjects at Edinburgh Napier University. He is also a lecturer in music at the University of the Highlands and Islands, and is a Teaching Fellow in the Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh. He has a strong research interest in popular music education, music pedagogy, music in higher education, musical improvisation, and composition. Zack is also an active musician and composer performing as a saxophonist in ensembles and as a soloist.